USDA CORRECTS FINAL RULE REGARDING THE IMPORTATION OF ANIMALS AND ANIMAL PRODUCTS FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION

WASHINGTON, June 2, 2006–The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is correcting a final rule published in the May 19 Federal Register that amended regulations for animals and animal products imported into the United States from a region of the European Union (EU).

This final rule applied a uniform set of import requirements for classical swine fever (CSF) to regions consisting of all of 15 member states that comprised the EU prior to its expansion on May 1, 2004.

The final rule lists regions of the world that APHIS considers free of CSF. However, several regions recognized by APHIS in previous rulemaking as CSF-free were inadvertently omitted from that list. Those regions include the Mexican states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, Sonora and Yucatan. APHIS is correcting the list of CSF-free regions.

We are also redesignating in the final rule, a section of text that was inadvertently designated differently from the proposed rule, which caused another section of text to be removed. The removed text has been reinserted into the final rule and the text that was improperly designated has been corrected.

This corrected final rule was published in the June 1 Federal Register and becomes effective June 19.

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